Alastair Reynolds quotes - page 6

This was a watering hole, and watering holes drew the hungry as well as the parched. (Alastair Reynolds)
They might have their airships and machine guns, but superstition wasn't something that went away just because you had engines and bullets. View quote
Alastair Reynolds
Do you see us slavering for revenge, that most pointlessly biological of imperatives? View quote
Alastair Reynolds
We were sowing so much misinformation that some of it came back and bit us. View quote
Alastair Reynolds
Don't you start. It's bad enough that one of us feels he could have done more. We're human, Campion-that's all it boils down to. Human and not nearly as clever as we thought we were when it counted. End of story. When they put up the gravestone for our species, that'll be the epitaph. View quote
Alastair Reynolds
Given the evidence at our disposal, only a fool would put any faith in the organic and the machine living harmoniously for the rest of time. View quote
Alastair Reynolds
They're your children. The more you try to force them to be like you, the more they're going to flare off in different directions like wild fireworks, the more they're going to surprise and disappoint you. View quote
Alastair Reynolds
There had been a human soul in that skull only a few hours earlier, and now no authority in the universe could bring her back. We were like monkeys sitting around a fire that had just extinguished, wondering why the warmth and light had gone away. View quote
Alastair Reynolds
I felt a terrible sadness open inside me, a void through which the winds from the end of the universe were blowing. View quote
Alastair Reynolds
Civilisations beyond number had risen from obscurity, considering themselves masters of all creation, before fading back into the footnotes of history. View quote
Alastair Reynolds
The problem was, although I was as certain as I could be that I was right, I could offer nothing to bolster my arguments. (Alastair Reynolds)
I was born in a house with a million rooms, built on a small, airless world on the edge of an empire of light and commerce that the adults called the Golden Hour, for a reason I did not yet grasp. View quote
Alastair Reynolds
I wish there was something we could do. But organised structure is the most precious thing in the universe. When it is lost, it is truly lost. View quote
Alastair Reynolds
That was the universe: you could beat it once, you could float a message in a bottle across half of eternity, but the universe would always find a way to have the last laugh. View quote
Alastair Reynolds
Some promises are best broken. Trust me on this: I'm a politician. View quote
Alastair Reynolds
Hallucination doesn't preclude a rational response to that same hallucination. View quote
Alastair Reynolds
Such hopes now seemed ludicrous in their naivety, like trying to stop a bulldozer with a feather. View quote
Alastair Reynolds
There's a lot here we don't understand. Adding one more thing to the list doesn't strike me as the worst crime imaginable. View quote
Alastair Reynolds
It was astonishing how quickly friendship could turn to enmity, she thought, like a compass needle swinging from one pole to the other. They'd been excellent friends. They'd make excellent enemies as well. View quote
Alastair Reynolds
She was pointing into the empty, angel-less heavens beyond. Everything else. The universe. View quote
Alastair Reynolds
We don't have enough evidence to decide either way,” Ricasso said, "so for now we may as well keep open minds. (Alastair Reynolds)
If my years as a shatterling had taught me anything, it was that not all questions had answers. Societies had reduced themselves to radioactive dust because they could not accept that single unpalatable truth. View quote
Alastair Reynolds
I'm not asking you to open your mind to all manner of nonsense, Doctor, merely to allow for the possibility of things you might previously have dismissed, or failed to give any consideration to whatsoever. Such as the fact that the world was not always this way, and by implication doesn't have to be this way in the future. View quote
Alastair Reynolds
Open your story-cube on the way home and ask it to tell you about causality violation. I did once, because I asked the same question you did. Why should I be limited? What right does the universe have to say what I can and can't do? I'm intelligent. The universe is just a lot of hydrogen and dirt, going through the motions. But in this instance the universe has the final say. View quote
Alastair Reynolds
People lived and died and did strange, pointless things to themselves. So did societies, be they city-sized states or galactic empires encompassing thousands of solar systems. Everything came and went, everything was new and bright with promise once and old and worn out later, and everything left a small, diminishing stain on eternity, a mark that time would eventually erase. View quote
Alastair Reynolds